Learn why these East Dallas community gardens have been thriving for nearly 30 years

Linked by Michael Levenston

Lon Sok works in the East Dallas Community and Market Garden. (David Woo/Staff Photographer)

“You can just come out here and share something with one another — there’s no transaction or anything,” Rosen says. “Community gardens make you feel like you’re a part of something bigger.”

By Alejandra Salazar
By Dallas News
Sept 22, 2017

Excerpt:

Tucked into Dallas’ rapidly growing urban infrastructure, the East Dallas and Live Oak community gardens are almost impossible to miss.

These are two of the city’s oldest, most productive community gardens, striking strips of green along Fitzhugh Avenue. They are thriving bastions of agriculture amidst brick, steel and concrete, between the apartment complexes and small businesses cropping up around them.

Dallas-based refugee families, primarily from Bhutan and Cambodia, have dedicated time and labor to sustain these gardens. In the case of the East Dallas garden, nearly 30 years’ worth.

Patient and committed, these gardeners plant, grow and harvest food for market and for their own kitchens. Day in and day out, they wake up in the early morning to make it out to their plots. They water crops and pluck weeds before heading to work and before the sun becomes unbearable. This is as early at 6 a.m. for some.